Gubbay (Gabbai) Family (India)

(669 words)

Migrating from Baghdad in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, members of the Gubbay (Gabbai, Gabbay) family went westward to Aleppo and eastward to India and beyond, arriving in Calcutta and Bombay in the early nineteenth century. Along with other leading “Baghdadi” families, such as the Sassoons and the Ezras, with whom they intermarried, the Gubbays were involved in the indigo, textile, and opium trades.

In Calcutta, Elia(s) Shalome Gubbay (1829–1898) became a leading merchant and real estate investor. His philanthropy and civic engagement extended t…